


Deeper Than He

by laetificat



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Body Horror, Gen, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 12:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16682065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laetificat/pseuds/laetificat
Summary: The wolf has left its mark on John Marston.Werewolf AU. Some spoilers for the first missions in the game.





	Deeper Than He

**Author's Note:**

> I can't resist a good werewolf AU! also a reminder that zombies, vampires, ghosts, cannibals, giants, unicorns, jackalopes and the Horses of the Apocalypse are canon in RDR. so werewolves aren't actually that much of a stretch ;3
> 
> this was originally going to be a one-shot but I might keep going with it.
> 
> apologies for being so clichéd as to put a Jack London quote in a werewolf story but I love it ok.

_"Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest."_

Jack London, The Call of the Wild (1903)

  


* * *

  


John remembered few details of the encounter. Only the thin cold air of the mountains burning his throat; the snow, heavy and wet, dragging against his legs as he ran. A glimpse of the moon rising through the trees.

Something huge loping through the snow after him, close on his heels, breathing plumes of steam and the stink of carrion and rotten ice.

A roar of sound. Sudden, raking pain. 

*

He remembered coming to, perhaps a hundred feet further up the mountain than he was before. Dragged, somehow, through the night. Cast onto the rocks and scree like a discarded carcass. Alive but unable to stand, half his body burning, the other half numb with cold. Blood in his eyes, coating his tongue and teeth. His face throbbing. A feeling that he was being watched.

He remembered watching the sun glitter on the newly fallen snow, then blinking and seeing the shadows lengthen and stretch like taffy; time fading in and out. Knowing, somewhere in his gut, that this was how he was going to die.

Then night, seeing the stars burn and shift above him, clearer than he had ever seen them before. Feeling like his blood was singing in his veins, his body thrumming and trembling. He remembered, vaguely, trying to drag himself away from the edge of the cliff and collapsing into the snow. Then morning again, piercing rays stabbing into his swimming head, and suddenly there was a warm hand on his face and he had been calling out, or perhaps howling, and it was Arthur and Javier, and they were real, joking and jostling him as they hoisted him onto their shoulders. Arthur’s grip firm and sure, Javier smelling like old cologne and pipe smoke. Relief blossomed inside John's chest.

He remembered being bundled onto a horse, and the sounds of gunshots, cursing, as they rode.

The wolves, running behind them, tongues lolling over their white teeth.

*

The cabin they put him in was more a barn than a real home, the wind finding its way between the rough-hewn boards of the walls to whisk away any warmth the fire could bring. John was warm, though -- too warm. His skin felt stretched and taut over his bones, uncomfortable in a way he couldn't fully articulate. The wounds on his face and side continued to bleed. Hosea and Miss Grimshaw fussed over him like mother hens, dosing him with Strauss’ last bottle of laudanum to help him sleep through the fever. 

He couldn’t sleep, though. Or at least the sleep he managed wasn't true sleep, but a time of vivid dreams; strange images of running through an endless tundra under a sky lit with bright green-purple bands of light, chasing huge and ancient beasts that wallowed and bleated their deaths in the snow; a song rising around him that made him want to stretch wide his jaws and join in, a song of something old and beautiful and terribly, terribly hungry --

He woke with a start and heard a brief startled scream. Tilly leaned towards him, illuminated by a warm wash of candle light. She reached out as if to touch him, then drew her hand back. John moved his head a little and the room swam around him. His bones ached; he felt himself stretch out his fingers, the knuckles cracking. 

“Thank goodness you’re awake, Mr. Marston. We were all afraid you wouldn’t wake again, not after -- ” she stopped, her gaze darting over John’s face. Visibly calming herself, she gathered her knitting in her lap and stood. “I’ll go find Dutch. He said to bring him, soon as you woke. You just stay here.”

She smoothed the blankets down over him, shrinking back only a little as he groaned despite himself, the sound strangely deep and wet in his chest. She left, not slowly, and not without many backward glances. 

The door didn’t shut properly behind her. It opened a little on its hinges, letting in a damp breath of chill night air. John could smell the horses stabled nearby, the pines, the deep snows. He could see the moonlight through the cracks, silver and blue. 

He thought perhaps he would feel cooler out there. The close air of the cabin was suddenly stifling, the stench of his sickness choking him. He needed to get outside.

With an effort he heaved himself off the cot, ignoring the scattered blankets and bottles of medicine rolling across the floor. The ground was unsteady beneath his feet, pitching him back and forth, but he managed to stagger across the room. A deep trembling seized him as he reached the door, shuddering through his spine, so he almost fell out onto the crust of dirty ice and mud. His skin felt like it was on fire. The vision out of his wounded eye shivered red and black.

A voice raised across the camp, coming closer. Dutch, he realised, and Tilly and Hosea. 

Fear gripped his insides, an instinct he didn't understand except to obey it. They would come and bring him back inside. He couldn't be inside, not now, not for what was about to --

He scrambled away from the door into the shadow of a wagon, then limped along the boundary of the camp. He was barefoot and in his underwear but he didn't feel the cold as he plunged into the snow. Instead, each step felt better than the one before, felt correct, some distant part of his mind guiding him. Run, it told him. Run and get away from those you love.

Raised voices came from the direction of the cabin. Shouts.

He started to run faster. 

Soon he was under the trees, in the sheltering blackness of the ancient pines, breathing in their soft scent. The camp was a distant blur of lights and noise somewhere behind him. Safe.

Then the pain began.

It seized him as it did before, a sharp agony that shivered through him, like a great hand hooked in his guts. He fell to the ground, letting out a hoarse caw of sound like a gut-shot deer, drool and bile dripping from his lips. His fingers dug into the dark earth, pine needles spearing his skin. The pain raced through him, then redoubled, until it felt like his skeleton was trying to split itself apart. 

He couldn't draw breath to scream.

Instead, he clawed at the ground; his fingers were longer, sharper, knuckles cracking and reforming even as he watched, some part of him standing horrified and mute witness as his muscles and skin warped like wax running down the side of a candle; and it was all over him, his whole body, bones breaking and snapping and changing, organs and sinew twisting inside of him. He writhed in the dirt, beyond consciousness, beyond human understanding.

The creature that was John Marston pulled in a tortured breath through a mouth too full of teeth, and howled out its pain to the uncaring moon.


End file.
